Does Music Effect Your Short Term Memory?

Broad Question

Does music effect short term memory?

Specific Question

Do "School House Rocks" songs help you remember important information instantly?

Hypothesis

It will be beneficial to people to listen to the music.

Graph of Hypothesis

Variables

Independent Variable: People

Dependent Variable: How much memory of the song/paragraph do they remember?

Variables That Need To Be Controlled:

Song
Earphones
Paper

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General Plan

I will print out a copy of the preamble of the constitution. I then will get the song ready to play with earphones plugged in. I finally will do the experiment where they listen to or read the preamble, then repeat as many words (in order) to me.

Safety Or Environmental Concerns

There could be someone with a sickness/other (ex. lice). To prevent the spread of anything I will wipe down the headphones with disinfectant wipes to prevent the spread of it.

Experimental Design

(add the correct headings from the experimental design page before beginning)

Resources and Budget Table

Item	Where I Will Get This	Estimated Cost
Poster Board	Staples	$5.00
Disinfectant Wipes	Walmart	$2-4

Data Table

Time Line

Today(3/16/12)- Finish Timeline
Next Week (3/18/12-3/25/12)- Get Experiment together.
Two Weeks from Now (3/26/12-3/31/12)- Do experiment.
Three Weeks from Now (4/1/12-4/7/12)- Work on wiki page.
Four Weeks from Now (4/8/12-4/14/12)- Wiki page.
Five Weeks from Now (4/15/12-4/21/12)- Wiki page and poster.
Six Weeks from Now (4/22/12-4/30/12)- Poster.
Seven Weeks from Now (5/1/12-5/4/12)- Get verbal presentation together.

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Background Research

The human brain is very complex, and so is the memory part. The part of the brain that is charge of memory is the cerebrum, which is the largest part of the brain. Long term memory is important, and so is short term memory. In fact, short term memory can only remember seven things at a times. Usually, the brain can remember short patterns for a minimum amount of time. Unfortunately, the brain cannot remember long, complex songs and patterns. The more often the same pattern is heard though, the more the brain can remember of it. All in all, the brain is important but can remember important information.

References

http://clearinghouse.missouriwestern.edu/manuscripts/230.php
Agenda Book page 96

Detailed Procedure

1. First, obtain a computer. Print out a copy of the preamble from the constitution.
2. Secondly, use the same computer to find the lyric video of the preamble (youtube works best for a search engine for videos).
3. Next, find people to participate in your research. If you don't have enough subjects to test, your results will not be very accurate.
4. Have one person listen to the video (make sure they are not looking at the screen at all. If they do it will not be accurate data because they saw the words.) The next person you test should read aloud the preamble to them. Again, make sure that they do not see any of the words at all.
5. Record for every person how many words that they get right (in order). After getting several recordings, you are done with your experiment. Compare results.

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Results

All Raw Data

Words Remembered With Music	Words Remembered Without Music
16	16
15	10
9	10
14	11

Graphs

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Data Analysis

The average words remembered of the preamble is not very high on either side, considering there are only 52 words in the preamble total. For the people without music, they on average could remember 12 words. Most had not even heard of what the preamble was. The people who listened to the song by School House Rocks had also never heard of what the preamble was, and they on average could only remember 14 words. All in all, the difference in averages in not very big. In fact, there was such a small difference, that there really is no immediate benefit to it.

Conclusion

My original hypothesis was "It will be beneficial to people to listen to the music." Unfortunately, my prediction was not correct. When it comes to short term memory, music is not that effective. It has only been heard once and has not had time to sink in. However, it does have an effect on long term memory. After hearing the song multiple times, I have been able to remember at least half of the song (this is untested data). In the end, my experiment did not come out to what I had predicted.

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Discussion

The meaning of my project is to see if it can change schooling and help the community in any way. If music can enhance memory, then it is very beneficial to use music in school. Unfortunately, it does not work instantly. If it worked instantly, it would be more commonly used. For future research, people could test long term memory instead. They most likely would have better results. Originally though, they would have gotten the idea to test memory with music from my project. If future studies are done about a similar topic, I can say I was the reason that they were successful!

Benefit to Community and/or Science

If any type of music can be beneficial to help humans remember information, it would be ideal to use this tool to our advantage. How often do you forget important information? For most people, they forget something everyday. If music is the way to remember this important information, then why no use it to our advantage?

Abstract

My initial question was "Does music effect short term memory?" which was then narrowed down to "Does "School House Rocks" songs help you remember important information instantly?" I then hypothesized that the songs would help people remember the information better than other methods. According to my background research, it is difficult to very difficult to remember patterns, especially long and complicated ones. A song is one of the hardest to memorize. Over time though, it becomes easier to remember the same pattern.
To accurately perform my experiment, I had to go through multiple steps. First, I had to find a computer and print out a copy of the preamble. I then had to get the lyric video (through youtube) so people could listen to the song. I then read aloud the preamble (twice) for half of the people I tested (individually). The other half I had listen to the music without looking at the screen at all (individually). I then recorded how many words they could remember in order and then averaged the numbers for each of the groups. The people who did listen to the music averaged a number of 14 words while the people who didn't listen to the music only could remember 12. This means that music did help, but it was so little that it was almost ineffective. I have come to the conclusion that music is not very effective for short term memory, but for long term memory, that is a different story. This data is untested, but people who grew up in the generation of when the videos were first introduced, they often times can remember significant excerpts from some of the videos. If people do decide to test long term memory with music and how music effects memory, they will have my data to help them figure out important information.